New Windows CE device

Just bought myself a new CE handheld. Actually I only paid $18 for it and that was delivered from China. I got an email from eBay this morning that said this:

Dear Rich,

We want to let you know that on April 4 we had a technical issue that led to service interruption, both on the eBay site and on eBay mobile applications.

The issue is now fully resolved; however, as a result of the interruption, your purchases may not have completed. We encourage you to review your recent transactions in My eBay and make sure you complete any intended purchases.

With our sincere apologies for any inconvenience you encountered, we'd like to provide you with an eBay Coupon for 10% off (up to $10) your next purchase, redeemable until April 30, 2012.

Anyways, the CE device was only $20.40 and I got 10% off of that. Here it is:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/130590324897?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649

What'cha think? Am I losing my mind buying this stuff?

Hardly. That's a pretty incredible deal. I've been looking at a few devices like this myself since I noticed that you can play FM radio from them. But it looks like this one says it "supports FM radio transmission" - not clear if that really means a built-in FM receiver.

Well, it depends on whether or not you need a GPS. :-) Looks nice in terms of a remarkably low-priced development, but I question how functional it might be beyond being a GPS. It looks like you're going to have to use a bigger TF (SD) card to have a significant media collection (for those that don't have car audio systems that have an AV or USB plug). If its battery life is any good, it could be usable as a passenger entertainment system, but around this area, the police get abit excited when they see the driver reading a book or watching a video.

Yeah, people kind of don't like it when you are busy reading an ebook and the light has turned green already and you are still sitting there.

I was able to download the use manual in pdf form. The FM transmitter allows you to transmit the devices audio to your car radio through the normal antenna system. You can tune it to an unusued frequency on your car radio, playing MP3 files. But it is limited, that is the default software doesn't have play lists. Rather you select the file folder where your music resides and it plays every song within that folder sequentially and then loops.

Battery life is pretty poor really, just over an hour playing any music or video, and that is with the screen set on a dimmer setting. The device is really meant to be plugged in I think.

The maps have to be stored on the TF card, and the included 2Gb card is pretty much consumed with the US maps. You would have to substitute a larger 4Gb or 8Gb card to carry other files on.

Note that it runs CE5, not CE6 as some of the newer ones have. Further research shows that the touchscreen is the resistive type, not capactive. I'm curious as to the hardware and the OS image. I wonder if I will be able to mod it any, copy any of drivers and use them in my Android resistive touchpad. I'll probably turn it into a brick which is my usual modus operandi.

I believe there are several options for installing all sorts of software "enhancements" on CE GPS devices. I stumbled upon the resource a while back. Google will be your friend.

There are possibilities for the MT3351 devices, but you have to be very very very careful. It is possible to inadvertently delete device specific registry entries that allow for GPS operation. Turning this into a brick will be easier than any netbook, and I've plenty of experience ruining those.

Rich, That looks like it will be fun for you to play around with! Like you said... be really careful, but it was pretty cheap...and bricking it would be nothing new

Okay, got my $18 GPS unit today in the mail...and am very pleased with it. Got it on the charger now, but that didn't stop me from playing with it.

This is another one of those NAND memory devices where everything is stored in a .bin file on the NAND drive and when you power up, the OS decompresses on the fly and runs CE 5.0. Just like your common netbooks.

The device appears to be Russian in origin, even though I ordered it from China...or at least the system files were designed or copied from someone who was Russian.

When you power up, a proprietary CE shell runs. That shell is basically a customized launcher program that lets you select what you want to do...i.e. read a text file, look at pictures, play music, etc. And the shell has system calls to components of the CE5 OS, such as the screen calibration .cpl application, etc.

You are pretty much locked into the shell with one exception. You can run just about any GPS Windows CE program you want on this thing as that is stored entirely on the micro-SD card. You have to specify the path to the GPS program through the shell. Since the program doesn't know that the program you specified is a GPS program, you can actually set that path to any executable you want on the SD card.

In the pictures below you can see that I set the path to Total Commander, and from there I was able to access the entire CE device just like I could with any HPC. And I could run any CE program as well from Total Commander...so really, except for the shell, it is a pretty open device for hacking...though any needed dlls have to be copied to the SD card since you cannot write to the NAND drive directly, or if you do, they are not retained after a reset/power down.

Rich,
That is outstanding! Especially for the price you paid!!! Nice find...